Month: April 2017

Wow! I have less than 2 weeks left on what has been the greatest adventure of my life.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself succeeding at one of the toughest challenges of my life.

Norway. You have been amazing and beautiful, but you have also been tough and challenging.

When I take a step back and go through the course of events that unfolded to lead to this… It blows my mind.

I am just a girl from humble beginnings who had a goal. a vision. a target.

I sat across the table from my parents four years ago, telling them to start saving up because I want to be the exchange student and represent my college and country in my final year. They had every ounce of faith in me. They believed in me. They fueled my fire.

My parents trusted that I would work towards my dream and had my back the entire time.

I have put countless hours of hard work, sleepless nights, determination and motivation to push me ahead of the rest, to be able to achieve my goal. I don’t think I have ever wanted something so badly, in my life.

…And hard work pays off. I got what I worked hard for. I was afforded the opportunity of a lifetime.

I know that from here, there can only be bigger and better things for me to conquer in my life.

This trip to Norway has been intense. It was 3 months away from anything familiar to me, completely drenched in a new culture, new people and new expectations.

This trip has shown me my true strength, which I sometimes doubt I actually have.

It has shown my perseverance and drive. My determination and ambition. I dug deep within myself and found a fighter. I fought through the cold, the language barriers, the high expectations from college. I fought through the moments of weakness when I missed my family and loved ones, the moments of sadness when I felt low and fought through not knowing how to cook and clean, to become self-sufficient.

I think I did well! I made it to the last few days and I’m still here, still surviving. Still doing my thing.

I often put myself in pressurizing situations, and I am very hard on myself, but that’s only because I know that if I don’t push myself…I will never know how great I can truly be.

I will be returning to South Africa having acquired new skill sets, being more sure of myself and having made my parents proud.

All I’ve ever wanted was to make my parents proud. They both started off from nothing and became such amazing, accomplished people. They have given me everything and so much more. All I want is to show them, they have raised me in their image. I’ve learnt so much from both my mom and my dad, and all that I am is a tribute to them.

It’s really quite overwhelming when you have achieved a goal that you have been chasing for 3 long years. The amount of inner strength I found in myself has been phenomenal. The journey on which I have embarked would be scary, even to an adultier adult than I am. But I looked it straight in the face and tackled it head on.

I am proud of myself. I overcome a lot of challenges, took a lot of risks. I made many friends, explored, went on adventures, acquired knowledge, submerged myself in another culture. I did all the things I wanted to do and even conquered a few things I wasn’t even expecting.

The world better start getting ready for me… Once I get my degree, I am going to be a force to be reckoned with.

What I have learnt is; to respect myself more, trust my instinct more, be more forgiving of myself and to have more confidence in my capabilities. I think I did pretty well considering the odds.

I owe myself this much. A chance. A chance to be great.

I find that I stand stronger than ever before and I am so eager to end this trip on a high note, then go back home and knock the ball out of the park with my final year of college.

I have never believed in myself more than I do right now. If you want something bad enough, you will do everything in your power to have it. I think I can look forward to more growth and stability in the years to come…but this opportunity has certainly set the pace for the rest of my life.

Thank you Mom and Dad. I love you guys so much and I hope I have made you proud. I am coming home to you a little wiser, a little stronger and a little smarter.

If you have read all the way to this point. I want to say this to you: Don’t settle for any less than you deserve. You can do anything you put your mind to. Just go for it with passion and drive. You owe yourself everything you have been dreaming off, make it happen!

I leave you with a visual representation of me as a baby to my most current picture. Its been a looooong, hard 26 year journey. But I’m all the better for it.

“Some people survive and talk about it. Some people survive and go silent. Some people survive and create. Everyone deals with unimaginable pain in their own way, and everyone is entitled to that, without judgement. So the next time you look at someone’s life covetously, remember… you may not want to endure what they are enduring right now, at this moment, whilst they sit so quietly before you, looking like a calm ocean on a sunny day. Remember how vast the ocean’s boundaries are. Whilst somewhere the water is calm, in another place in the very same ocean, there is a colossal storm.” —Nikita Gill, People Survive in Different Ways

So I watched a video which inspired me and heavily influenced my writing today. In fact, most of the video made me reflect and influenced this piece. I’d like to share a few thoughts with you. Bear in mind, this post is raw and real. It’s not perfect and certainly not a perfect piece of writing. But it’s true and it’s honest.

Here it is:Some people come into your life for a lifetime, some for a season. You have to know which is which. You will always mess up if you mix the seasonal people with lifetime expectations.

I put everybody who comes into my life in the category of a tree. Some people are like leaves on the tree. The wind blows – they’re over here (unstable), it blows the other way, they’re over there. Seasons changes and they wither and die. They’re gone. It’s alright. That’s some people. Most people in the world are like them, they’re just there to take from the tree- they do nothing but take and give shade every now and then. That’s all they can do. But don’t get mad at people like that. That’s who they are.

Some people are like a branch on that tree. You gotta be careful with the branches too. They might fool you. They make you think they are strong and a good friend but the minute you step out on your own, they will break and leave you high and dry.

But if you find yourself 2 or 3 people in your life that are like the roots at the bottom of the tree. You are blessed because that’s the kind of people that aren’t going anywhere. If those roots weren’t there, that tree couldn’t live. A tree can have a hundred million branches but only a few roots down at the bottom, to make sure it gets everything it needs. When you get some roots, hold on to them.

But the rest, let it go. Let people go.Nobody said it would be easy, but it gets easy when you learn how to love yourself. When you get to a point in your life when you look at people and go “you or me?”, you have to make a decision.

I’m not saying just throw people away. But if they’re doing something you don’t like, raise the issue with them. If you see them even trying to make an effort, that’s a person worth keeping. That’s a leaf that’s trying to grow up and be something else. You understand?

But if you tell somebody “what you’re doing is hurting me and I need you to stop” and they keep doing it. They don’t care. Move on. Let them go. No matter how much it hurts, let them go. It gets easier, I promise you, every day it gets easier but you just got to make it through.

Sometimes you gotta learn how to be by yourself. People have to learn how to be alone. I don’t understand all these people saying “oh I need somebody”, that is crazy as hell. If you don’t know how to be by yourself, what are you gonna do with somebody else?

Work on you. Figure yourself out. Get yourself together.

I’d rather be in a corner by myself with a puppy and a goldfish and be happy than be sitting around with somebody in my life and I’m wondering “what the hell are they there for??”

You would be surprised at the things people will put up with, just to hear somebody say they love them. That’s crazy. I don’t understand anymore.

I can’t live in dysfunction. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’ve come through too much. Been through too much hell and high-water to come here and let a person come up into my adult life when I’m supposed to be at peace and give me all kinds of hell.

So there it is. My thoughts from today. My soul exposed. I hope it will help atleast one person or touch someone today.

I hope you find your roots and I hope you find your strength.

Wishing you peace and light.

“Being a good person is a choice. Don’t let people fool you into believing that truly good people never have bad thoughts, are never tempted by the easier path, by the low road, never mess up or act out selfishly. Never believe a person can be good without making a conscious effort.

Every single time you do something good, you’ve made a decision to make the world a little brighter.

Goodness is not an inherent trait, it is a choice. Keep making it. I see you, I’m proud of you, and I’m rooting for you.” -Molly Anne #ThingsToNeverForget

I read it and it made sense to me. I thought I would share it here with you.

These aren’t my words, they’re the words of author Kate Rose who wrote the article for elephant Journal website.

However, they are thoughts and sentiments I agree with. They just kinda explain so much by simplifying things. I liked it. It may not be everyone’s cuppa tea, but if you wanna read about a writers interpretation of the three greatest loves of our lives, then read this. Some are lucky enough to have one great love. Others not. Read anyway. I think it’s lovely to hear others interpretations on love because every single person has a different opinion and view. So here is the article:

“It’s been said that we really only fall in love with three people in our lifetime.

Yet, it’s also believed that we need each of these loves for a different reason.

Often our first is when we are young, in high school even. It’s the idealistic love—the one that seems like the fairytales we read as children.

This is the love that appeals to what we should be doing for society’s sake—and probably our families. We enter into it with the belief that this will be our only love and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel quite right, or if we find ourselves having to swallow down our personal truths to make it work because deep down we believe that this is what love is supposed to be.

Because in this type of love, how others view us is more important than how we actually feel.

It’s a love that looks right.

The second is supposed to be our hard love—the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved. This is the kind of love that hurts, whether through lies, pain or manipulation.

We think we are making different choices than our first, but in reality we are still making choices out of the need to learn lessons—but we hang on. Our second love can become a cycle, oftentimes one we keep repeating because we think that somehow the ending will be different than before. Yet, each time we try, it somehow ends worse than before.

Sometimes it’s unhealthy, unbalanced or narcissistic even. There may be emotional, mental or even physical abuse or manipulation—most likely there will be high levels of drama. This is exactly what keeps us addicted to this storyline, because it’s the emotional rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows and like a junkie trying to get a fix, we stick through the lows with the expectation of the high.

With this kind of love, trying to make it work becomes more important than whether it actually should.

It’s the love that we wished was right.

And the third is the love we never see coming. The one that usually looks all wrong for us and that destroys any lingering ideals we clung to about what love is supposed to be. This is the love that comes so easy it doesn’t seem possible. It’s the kind where the connection can’t be explained and knocks us off our feet because we never planned for it.

This is the love where we come together with someone and it just fits—there aren’t any ideal expectations about how each person should be acting, nor is there pressure to become someone other than we are.

We are just simply accepted for who we are already—and it shakes to our core.

It isn’t what we envisioned our love would look like, nor does it abide by the rules that we had hoped to play it safe by. But still it shatters our preconceived notions and shows us that love doesn’t have to be how we thought in order to be true.

This is the love that keeps knocking on our door regardless of how long it takes us to answer.

It’s the love that just feels right.

Maybe we don’t all experience these loves in this lifetime, but perhaps that’s just because we aren’t ready to. Maybe the reality is we need to truly learn what love isn’t before we can grasp what it is.

Possibly we need a whole lifetime to learn each lesson, or maybe, if we’re lucky, it only takes a few years.

Perhaps it’s not about if we are ever ready for love, but if love is ready for us.

And then there may be those people who fall in love once and find it passionately lasts until their last breath. Those faded and worn pictures of our grandparents who seemed just as in love as they walked hand-in-hand at age 80 as they did in their wedding picture—the kind that leaves us wondering if we really know how to love at all.

Someone once told me they are the lucky ones, and perhaps they are.

But I kinda think that those who make it to their third love are really the lucky ones.

They are the ones who are tired of having to try and whose broken hearts lay beating in front of them wondering if there is just something inherently wrong with how they love.

But there’s not; it’s just a matter of if their partner loves in the same way they do or not.

Just because it has never worked out before doesn’t mean that it won’t work out now.

What it really comes down to is if we are limited by how we love, or instead love without limits. We can all choose to stay with our first love, the one that looks good and will make everyone else happy. We can choose to stay with our second under the belief that if we don’t have to fight for it, then it’s not worth having—or we can make the choice to believe in the third love.

The one that feels like home without any rationale; the love that isn’t like a storm—but rather the quiet peace of the night after.

And maybe there’s something special about our first love, and something heartbreakingly unique about our second…but there’s also just something pretty amazing about our third.

The one we never see coming.

The one that actually lasts.

The one that shows us why it never worked out before.

And it’s that possibility that makes trying again always worthwhile, because the truth is you never know when you’ll stumble into love.”

“You found parts of me I didn’t know existed and in you I found a love I no longer believed was real.” ~ Unknown

Sometimes when you’re walking to or from your destination and it’s just you and nature, and the quietness and stillness of being alone, you think really deeply about things. The littlest things. Or the big things. Anything really. I feel like getting lost in thought is healthy sometimes. And because I’m a dreamer, it happens more often than not with me. I think about love a lot. And this article struck a deep nerve, and deserved some equally deep introspection.

I really liked this article. A lot.
Peace and light to you. I hope you all find that great love of your life! And I hope it’s magical.